1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a recording medium, a parking support apparatus and a parking support screen for supporting the operation of parking a vehicle by the driver.
2. Description of the Related Art
Systems for supporting the operation of parking a vehicle by the driver have been proposed in recent years.
Parking support systems adapted to display a plan view of the vehicle to be parked and its vicinity to support the parking operation are known as prior art (see, for example, Patent Document 1: Jpn. Pat. Appln. Laid-Open Publication No. 2003-252151). The parking support system proposed in the above cited patent document is designed to detect positional relationship between the vehicle to be parked (to be referred to as own vehicle) and the other vehicle or vehicles located near the parking space as obstacles according to the left and right images of the own vehicle that are picked up by the cameras arranged at the left and right sides of the front line of the own vehicle, the distance by which the own vehicle has moved and the change in the direction of the own vehicle, generates a synthetic image showing the positional relationship as a plan view and outputs it to a display apparatus.
Techniques are also known to generate an image from an arbitrarily selected angle of view by interpolating the plurality of images picked up by one or more than one cameras (see, for example, Non-Patent Document 1: Information Processing Society, Research Report 2003-AVM-43(17) (2003)).
However, it is very strange for a driver to maneuver a vehicle while watching a bird eye view. Drivers are not used to drive a car while watching a bird eye view in ordinary situations and hence become at a loss when they are forced to maneuver a vehicle while watching a bird eye view only when parking a vehicle. Additionally, it is difficult for a driver to accurately grasp the situation surrounding the own vehicle and, for example, find a small gap between the own vehicle and a vehicle staying near by, simply by watching a bird eye view.
Additionally, when a bird eye view is synthesized from images showing a vehicle moving on the ground, the three-dimensionally expressed objects in the bird eye view such as the vehicles staying nearby may be extremely deformed and appear very strange to the viewer.